Intel has recently unveiled details about its upcoming mobile processors Lunar Lake, expected to compete directly with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips in terms of overall performance and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The company noted that Lunar Lake is designed for the “next-generation AI PC” and will be released in Q3 2024, with mass production already underway.
Introduction of Arrow Lake
Additionally, Intel declared plans to launch the Arrow Lake processors in Q4 2024. Apart from joining the Core Ultra 200 series like Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake chips will differ by being released for both mobile and desktop computer segments. Intel promises to reveal more about Arrow Lake at the forthcoming Computex exhibition.
Intel at Build 2024
The unveiling of Lunar Lake coincided with Microsoft’s Build 2024 conference, where Microsoft introduced its Surface Laptop powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite Arm-processor. Major computer companies, including Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, followed suit with announcements of their own solutions based on Snapdragon Arm-processors.
Lunar Lake Vs. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon
In its promotional materials, Intel has directly compared the performance of Lunar Lake with Qualcomm’s solution. Notably, compared to Snapdragon X, Lunar Lake is expected to deliver 1.4 times higher AI performance for image generation using Stable Diffusion 1.5 and a 1.5 times improvement of integrated graphics performance than the Meteor Lake processors. Moreover, Lunar Lake will provide higher computing performance compared with both AMD Ryzen 7 8840U and Snapdragon X Elite.
Regarding energy consumption, Intel stated that the Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) will decrease energy usage by 30% compared to Ryzen 7 7840U and 20% compared to Qualcomm 8cx Gen3 when running Microsoft Teams.
Introducing a New Architecture
Lunar Lake would employ a new architectural design for both computing and graphics cores. These chips will encompass large P-cores (Lion Cove) and energy-efficient E-cores (Skymont). The processors will also include a unique block called Advanced Low Power Island and an integrated NPU-engine with an AI-performance level of 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second). In combination with the new Xe2 architecture graphics core ensuring performance of 60 TOPS, the total AI-performance of Lunar Lake would equate to 100 TOPS.
Target Devices for Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake
The Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) processors are designed for use in thin and light laptops, mini PCs, and portable game consoles. The more powerful Arrow Lake chips will employ the same computing core architecture as Lunar Lake, but will feature an older Xe-LPG (Alchemist) graphics architecture. These chips are targeted for use in high-performance premium and gaming laptops, as well as desktop computers.
